10/14/2009 @ 6:00PM

In Depth: Self-Made Stars

Meet eight of the founder-run outfits on our America’s 200 Best Small Companies list. To compile the overall list, we looked for companies that demonstrated both sales and earnings growth. Candidates must have annual revenue between $5 million and $750 million, be publicly traded for at least a year and have a stock price no lower than $5. Rankings are based on earnings growth, sales growth and return on equity in the past 12 months and over five years; we dropped companies with fuzzy accounting or looming legal troubles. We also compared the stock performance of each company with that of its peers. Shares of last year’s list members outpaced the Russell 2000 small-cap index by 10 percentage points.

In most cases, the original founders have moved on, sold out or no longer play a key role in the operations. But a handful of these high fliers are still controlled by the savvy entrepreneurs who birthed them.